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cave we could see back the way we’d come—could watch to see what had startled those elephants. Sure enough, we soon spotted two men with guns and tattered clothes. Shiftas . They were coming in our direction.
    There are a lot of shiftas in Kenya—poachers who kill wild animals for money. As soon as we saw them, we knew we had to get away. Poaching is a serious crime, and shiftas are dangerous if they think someone has seen them at work. Luckily, the older guys figured out a way to go around the hill. It was probably five miles out of our way, but we managed to escape. Even then everyone was uneasy. Some boys kept insisting they could see people ahead of us, but it always turned out to be tree stumps they were seeing.
    We finally reached home at six or seven in the evening. It was about 40 miles, but we had covered it in about 12 hours because we were running most of the time. I took the older boys to my mother’s hut, because we have a lot of cattle and a lot of milk. They drank and rested, and the next morning they left for their own village.
    The next day we heard that the shiftas had found our tracks and followed us right to the edge of the village. That’s just one of the many dangers I encountered when I went to school.
     
    A LOT OF KIDS didn’t stay in school. Some ran away; some just didn’t return from vacation. People in the village knew they could slowly take their kids out, and no onewould follow up. The government had other things to do. Officials wouldn’t be asking every year if their kids were in school. But I was allowed to stay on.
    When I came home, my brothers would make fun of me. They’d say, “What do you think you’re getting in that school?”
    When I first started school, my father was always saying to my mother, “Why do you want him to go to school? We want him here. We should take him out.”
    But my mom would say, “No, no, we can’t. No way. We can’t have him stay here.” She could see I wanted to go. And every time I came home I’d tell stories. I’d bring candy for my brothers, too.
    I think the toughest part—tougher than the school, than the food, than walking home—was that gradually I was coming home to people who were not the same as I was anymore. When I got home I could see myself a little bit differently. I’d be taking care of the cattle or talking to my family about different things, and I’d be able to explain how my name was written—I’d show my brothers, and they would try to copy it. Or I could teach them some English, or some math. It’s so hard to explain the way it felt to be a little kid with a culture that was mine and another culture that I was learning. But I remember that from the beginning Iwanted my culture to be number one and school to be number two—I would learn them both at the same time if I could. The missionaries really did tell me, “Remove those clothes! The beads you’re wearing! It’s not right!” And at school, that’s what I did. But when I got home, I wore my traditional clothes and lived the way my family lives. And I still do.

Chapter 6
Herdsman
    Let’s praise the brave
    And castigate the cowards.
    W HEN I WAS ABOUT NINE YEARS OLD , there was a bad drought in our region. It hadn’t rained in almost two years. Water holes had dried up, and the grass had died. With so little water available, the nomads had scattered. My brother Ngoliong had taken our cattle a long way from the village, to an area called the Kaisut desert. He was alone there, and since I was home from school on vacation, I was sent to help him. I got there, and the sun was scorching—the soil was too hot to walk on. Everything was dry. The only green things were the acacia trees, which have long roots that grow deep into the ground.
    Because of the dry conditions, there was very little milk. The cattle just weren’t producing very much. So most of the time, we went hungry. When there was milk, we bled a cow, mixed the blood with the milk, and drank